Hellmut Ludwig Späth (4 December 1885 – 15 February 1945) was a German botanist and

plant nursery A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which sell to the general p ...

owner, murdered by the Nazi party. His nursery is now

Späth-Arboretum The Späth-Arboretum (3.5 hectares) is an arboretum now maintained by the Humboldt University of Berlin. It is located at Späthstraße 80/81, Berlin, Germany, and open several days per week in the warmer months. About The arboretum was beg ...

Biography

He was born 4 December 1885, the son of

Franz Franz may refer to: People * Franz (given name) * Franz (surname) Places * Franz (crater), a lunar crater * Franz, Ontario, a railway junction and unorganized town in Canada * Franz Lake, in the state of Washington, United States – see ...

and Wilhelmine Späth, became the sixth and last manager of the

Späth nursery The Späth (often spelt ''Spaeth'') family created one of the world's most notable plant nurseries of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The nursery had been founded in 1720 by Christoph Späth but removed to the erstwhile district of Baumschulen ...

on the death of his father in 1913. After studies at Cambridge, Hellmut returned to Berlin in 1910 and received his doctorate in 1912 from the Berlin Agricultural College. His dissertation was titled, ''The Locust Drive - a contribution to the knowledge of periodicity and annual ring formation in deciduous woody plants'', and was published by Paul Parey. Hellmut revived the nursery's fortunes during the Depression by joining the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

and obtaining lucrative landscaping contracts for the new

autobahn The (; German plural ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official German term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. ...

s and other public works. However, his outspoken criticism of the Nazi regime saw him incarcerated in

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

, where he was executed by firing squad in 1945. The nursery had closed in 1944, and in 1947 the arboretum passed into public ownership and became known as the Späthsches Arboretum. In 2009, a

Stolperstein A (; plural ; literally 'stumbling stone', metaphorically a 'stumbling block') is a sett-size, concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. The project, initia ...

(small, cobble stone-sized memorial plaque) was installed at his old school,

Landesschule Pforta Pforta, or Schulpforta, is a school located in Pforta monastery, a former Cistercians, Cistercian monastery (1137–1540), near Naumburg on the Saale River in the Germany, German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The site has been a school since the 16th ...

, to commemorate Späth as a victim of the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

."Allgemeine Berichte"
Landschule Pforta, official website. Retrieved June 11, 2010

References

External links

Späth Arboretum on Baumschulenweg

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spath, Hellmut Ludwig 1885 births 1945 deaths 20th-century German botanists Nurserymen People who died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp German civilians killed in World War II German people executed in Nazi concentration camps People executed by Nazi Germany by firing squad Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany